"Give me some more red wine!"

This would make me so happy. Please someone make me this. Which reminds me, I haven’t updated this blog in ages. I don’t have any consistency in hobbies anyway. I think I’ve been to Barcelona, Berlin and Costa del Sol since my last post and a lot of other stuff has happened to me since my last post. Still, I’m always dreaming of the next trip. This is a pintxo style burger. Pintxo is a sort of a tapas they eat in Northern Spain, love them.

Bueno. This Basque beauty is a pinch sweet, a pintxo salty, and all kinds of Spanish lisp-y. Behold, this braised oxtail burger comes served in it’s own sherry fortified jus, topped with seared foie gras, candied Jamón Ibérico, and skewered to a crispy slice of country bread lathered in a roast physalis, shallot compote. San Sebastián… you complete me.

Writing this in the middle of the winter is so dull. I hate snow, obviously because I am in a wheelchair. If I could decide living without any snow for the rest of my life instead of it, I would. Ok, obviously I could do that and move the fuck out of here.

The woman behind me is topless, like many other on the beach. Luckily she is spreading lotion so no boobflash! I was topless too most of the time. My friend Natalia lived in Barcelona and we met her on the beach and got some mojitos! We used to study Spanish together in high school. I seriously fell in love with Barcelona.

Next some random pictures from Barcelona.

Almost all of my closest friends are gay men, so I visit gay bars a lot. This one is from Dacksy, which we thought was a bit expensive, so we had only one mojitos there and went to find other cheaper places. We were twice at Arena Club, because it seemed to be the busiest with our aged people. Unlike in Paris, there were a lot of lesbians and faghags. I was in Paris last year in a club called Spizy with Kim and there were like 4 other women besides me. Wow, how embarrassing, I’ve made a post Paris 1 and after that no other part. And only 5 pictures. Maybe I should find the pics and make some post some day. I’m so lazy!

About the streets in Barcelona, they were really accessible and it was easy to move around by foot. Even in the older parts of the city.

Me and Eric flew from Turku to Girona airport with Ryanair on the 14th of August and took a bus to Barcelona.

Me at the Girona Airport, waiting for the bus to Barcelona.

I think the bus trip was like 2 hours or 1,5h. We were in Barcelona like at 01.00 and started to look for a hostel. On the first night we ended up in a hostel called Lullaby Garden, which was quite nice for it’s price. Was quite inaccessible in a way, it did have a sort of stool lift. You know the kind where you sit and it rolls you up the stairs. But because I can walk fairly well stairs on my own, we decided to just walk and Eric carried the wheelchair. The breakfast was really good too. Some pictures from the Lullaby:

Shoes.

The next day, me at Lullaby Garden hostel, going out to explore the city of Barcelona by day.

So after the breakfast we packed our stuff because we weren’t going to stay the next night there. It turned out we spent every night in a different hotel. Which was nice because I’m definitely going back to Barcelona and now I now 3 (!!!) hostels that have accessible rooms. I wonder if Helsinki has any hostels with accessible rooms. I mean cheap, hostel dorms rooms, not hotel rooms.

Pictures from the streets of Barcelona:

Eric on the streets of Barcelona! NP: Heli Kajo – Barcelona

Hipsters pose as Hipsters pose. @ Bar Casa Falcon

We got our first beers in Spain at Bar Casa Falcon, near our second nights hostel, the Urbany Hostel, which was very accessible. Though in our first room they had not thought that I might want to sleep in a down bunk. So they changed us to another room. It had wheelchair accessible toilets and showers too. I was really surprised and also grateful because I really didn’t want to sit on a floor in a sleazy shower. And Urbany had a pretty cool bar lounge terrace on its roof top:

From the terrace of Urbany Hostel Barcelona.

Me, before going out at Urbany Hostel.

As you can see, my hair looks horrible. I don’t know why, maybe it’s the humid or something. And I don’t think we had a straightening iron either. Or did we? Can’t remember anymore. I should always blog right after the trip.

Totally forgot to take pictures of the rooms but they were pretty nice, especially the fact that at the end of each bed, there was a socket. Because you know smart phones, always running out of battery. Especially when you are acting super tourist and taking pictures everywhere. At least Eric took a picture from our rooms’ window:

A view from our rooms’ window. @ Urbany Hostel Barcelona

I think the price was affordable too, but the location was a bit far from the beach and the center so we decided to go in to some other hostel next day.

After that we headed to the beach. Straight, Straight, Straight to the beach.

Now that is a one good looking sandwich. I bought some frozen salmon and baked it in the oven with some salt and pepper. I also made some garlic mayo. I got some beautiful olive ciapatta bread from the store, it is not mold as someone pointed out in facebook earlier! It is olives! Delicious olives. SO, I put the salmon first,, then some red onion rings, some salad and garlic mayo and finished it with some slices of mozzarella.

I have a problem with mozzarella. I really don’t like it. I think it doesn’t taste like anything, it’s chewy and boring. Or maybe I am buying the wrong mozzarella. Please someone prove me wrong. In this case I used mozzarella because I thought feta would be too dominating, but I still wanted some cheese. Halloumi would have been great, but I was so hungry I didn’t care to start to fry them on the pan. Would have been perfect though. Maybe next time, in the grilling season next Summer.

I’m a bit depressed that the Summer is already over. Everyone else is heading back to Aberdeen to Uni and I’m here in Helsinki all alone. It’s just that the situation doesn’t allow me to go back at least not this year. I have to fix my finances. I will probably apply to Helsinki Uni in the Spring. I should start ordering the test material books. Going to be weird reading about world politics and international relations in Finnish… Who knows if I ‘ll go back to Aberdeen Uni next year!

Today I thought I am going to make some tuna pasta. BUT. I noticed I have way too little pasta. I like to cook a bit bigger patch everytime so there’s leftovers for work or next day. And then I remembered I had some salmon fillets in the freezer. A plan began to emerge. Crushed tomatoes, the few handfuls of pasta, red onions, garlic, some small can of mushroom slices. And the salmon. Then I found some frozen pea-paprika-corn mix and added that too. And I remembered I have some instant Tom Yum-stuff and I threw a few bags of those too, just to give some asian flavour. I gotta say, it’s pretty good. I think I’m going to add some water to make it go a bit further, this plateful had quite a lot of stuff in it. The best thing about this was that I had all the stuff here at home! Didn’t have to go and buy anything. Which I couldn’t have done anyway since I have like 80 cents on my account at the moment.

I should make more soups. Especially now this time of the year. It is Tuesday 25th of September now! I am going to schedule to tomorrow though, because I already posted one blog post today.

That bowl btw is from Iittala, the series is called Taika, which is the word for Magic in Finnish. I have only that one red bowl from it. Too bad, I really like it. I think they don’t even make it in red anymore, only in blue and white. I love big bowls because you can eat more from them once. The Taika series goes very well with another Iittala-series I have a lot of, Teema. I have a lot of Teema in black and white and some in grey, which has since been cancelled. Teema stands for Theme, in English.

Just look at those babies. All wrapped in delicious bacon. Did you know I love bacon?

I can’t really remember all the goody goody stuff we put into these, but I’ll try: fried onion and paprika, ground meat, some tomato puree, taco sauce, chives and obviously some bacon. There was a lot of otherstuff too I think. No eggs though. Some leftover parmesan flakes and parma ham too! I was a bit worried about the sides of the patties but I think they turned out great, didn’t stay uncooked or anything. The patties were a bit runny on the pan but turned out just perfect.

With them we had some sour cream sauce I made with random spices. And some potatoes.

Obviously some red wine too. The food was awesome, as always with my cooking buddy Vesa!